The Barber by Hilaire Belloc — Read

Humanity, my dear little human race, is at once more difficult to get at and more generally present than you seem to know. You are yourselves human beings, dear people. Yet how many have so fully understood their fellows (that is, themselves) that they could exactly say how any man will behave or why any man behaves as he does? But with that I am not to-day concerned. I am concerned with another matter, which is the impossibility of getting away from these brothers of ours, even if we desire to do so.

Note you here, humans, that in reality you do not, even the richest of you, try to get away from your brothers. You do not like solitudes; you like sham, theatrical solitudes. You like the Highlands on condition that you have driven away the people rooted there, but also on condition that you may have there the wine called champagne. Now if you had seen that wine made, the gathering of the apples in the orchards of the Rhine and the Moselle, the adding of the sugar, the watching of the fermentation, and the corking with a curious machine, you would appreciate that if you insist upon champagne in the Highlands, then you are certainly taking humanity with you. If you could follow the thing farther and see them all passing the stuff on, each a little afraid of being found out, then you would know that as you drank your champagne in the most solitary valley you had done far from getting rid of humanity.